Reviews: Ono, Fuyumi

Sea of Wind —
Fuyumi Ono
The Twelve Kingdoms, book 2

1993’s
portal fantasy
Sea
of Wind
is the second volume in Fuyumi Ono’s Twelve
Kingdoms
series. The 2007 English language edition was translated by Alexander
O. Smith and Elye J. Alexander.

Taiki
spent his childhood wracked with guilt for continually disappointing
his judgmental grandmother, who never fully explained what he had
done wrong. Small wonder that the ten-year-old leapt at a mysterious
summons from another realm. Bye granny! Destiny awaits!

Sea of Shadow —
Fuyumi Ono
The Twelve Kingdoms, book 1

1992’s
portal fantasy Sea
of Shadow is the first volume in Fuyumi Ono’s Twelve
Kingdoms series. The 2007 English language edition was translated by Alexander
O. Smith, and Elye J. Alexander.

Yoko
Nakajima’s oddly coloured hair, lighter than any proper Japanese
person’s hair should be, makes her an object of suspicion to her
parents and schoolmates. It’s true that her hair has been its
present colour since birth, and that she is to all appearances a
normal, hardworking student and dutiful daughter. But isn’t that
just the sort of facade a covert nonconformist would adopt? Her
reluctance to assimilate by dying her hair black only underlines here
oddity. Although if she did colour her hair, that would also be bad
(her school forbids hair-colouring [1]).

But
things could get worse, and do. Accosted by a stranger, given a magic
sword and the ability to use it, attacked by monsters, Yoko is
transported from Japan to the strange world of the Twelve Kingdoms.